RegEx video

[Petar Petrenko]

Hi,

are there any chances to make a video tutorial about using RegEx? With some usefull examples, too.

[walt.farrell]

Is there something in particular you're having trouble with, Petar?

It's a fairly standard RegEx implementation, and it's pretty easy to transfer existing RegEx knowledge to the processing engine used in Publisher. So it might help to have some specific questions or issues to cover

[EmilyGoater]

14 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Hi,

are there any chances to make a video tutorial about using RegEx? With some usefull examples, too.

Hi @Petar Petrenko, it’s a great request. 👍

I can look at creating one very soon. Is there any quick questions you have for now, that myself or @walt.farrell can answer? 
 

 

[Joachim_L]

Welcome to the Affinity forums @EmilyGoater!

38 minutes ago, EmilyGoater said:

I can look at creating one very soon.

Fantastic idea, I was never good at regex. Perhaps anyone knows a regex for searching for 4 digit numbers and padding them. E.g. looking for 1234 (the numbers are random) and changing it into word1234word.

[Petar Petrenko]

6 hours ago, EmilyGoater said:

Hi @Petar Petrenko, it’s a great request. 👍

I can look at creating one very soon. Is there any quick questions you have for now, that myself or @walt.farrell can answer? 
 

 

1. Removing white spaces at the beggining and at the end of the paragraph (spaces, TABs...).
2. Removing double spaces inside paragraph.
3. Removing extra spaces in front of dots, commas...
4. Replacing local character formating with character styles, like: italic, bold, bold italic, superscipt... until Affinity adds this feature in Publisher when importing text or makes paragraph styles not to reset local character formating.

[dominik]

19 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

and it's pretty easy to transfer existing RegEx knowledge

As a RegEx dummy I want to chime in, too, to support @Petar Petrenko's suggestion.

I tried to transfer existing knowledge (a.k.a. read resources and guides on the internet) and miserably failed. For some reason RegEx seems too logical for me 😉

I admit with the help of a friend I finally solved one problem a couple of weeks ago.

 

5 hours ago, EmilyGoater said:

I can look at creating one very soon. Is there any quick questions you have for now, that myself or @walt.farrell can answer? 

Thank you @EmilyGoater (and Walt) for the offer to explain. Currently I do not have a specific question but I will follow this thread and its outcome.

Cheers,
d.

[walt.farrell]

5 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

Fantastic idea, I was never good at regex. Perhaps anyone knows a regex for searching for 4 digit numbers and padding them. E.g. looking for 1234 (the numbers are random) and changing it into word1234word.

There are several good RegEx education sites that can help you learn

I would suggest https://www.regular-expressions.info/ for general information and a good tutorial and introduction.

For your specific question, search for

(\d\d\d\d)

and then replace with

word\1word

Each \d matches one digit. The ( ) around it cause the matched value to be captured so it can be substituted during the replace phase of the operation.

[Petar Petrenko]

13 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

and then replace with

word\1word

Each \d matches one digit.

I saw somewhere that groups can be replaced with $1, $2... and you use \1 (word\1word).

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

I saw somewhere that groups can be replaced with $1, $2... and you use \1 (word\1word).

Which one to use is something a user needs to discover for each different regex processor that they use. In the case of the one used by Publisher, either the \1 form or the $1 form will work, whichever the user prefers.

[Petar Petrenko]

6 hours ago, EmilyGoater said:

Hi @Petar Petrenko, it’s a great request. 👍

I can look at creating one very soon. Is there any quick questions you have for now, that myself or @walt.farrell can answer? 
 

 

I would like to be much more familiar with RegEx for everyday tasks. It would be very useful if Affinity add RegEx within paragraph styles.

[Joachim_L]

46 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

For your specific question, search for

(\d\d\d\d)

and then replace with

word\1word

Each \d matches one digit. The ( ) around it cause the matched value to be captured so it can be substituted during the replace phase of the operation.

Thx for inspiration. Using (\d+) matches any length of a number. So 0 or 12 or 345 or 6789 etc. will be replaced.

[walt.farrell]

24 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

I would like to be much more familiar with RegEx for everyday tasks

That will only come from reading regex documentation (such as the site I mentioned above) and experimenting. Or asking questions and learning from the answers.

25 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

It would be very useful if Affinity add RegEx within paragraph styles.

There are already feature requests for that. You could post another, or concur with one of the existing ones in the Feature Requests forum.

[garrettm30]

I made a rather rough demo video (about an hour long) of using Regex and specifically how it relates to Publisher. I wish I had time to polish it up, but I am short on time, and I have spent a couple hours on it as it is with preparation of examples and a couple of recordings. I ultimately recommend you check out more polished videos online, but this one will get you started with how regex can be used in Publisher.

I am sure if the Serif team puts together a tutorial video, it will be much better done and quite welcome.

[Petar Petrenko]

25 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

I made a rather rough demo video (about an hour long) of using Regex and specifically how it relates to Publisher. I wish I had time to polish it up, but I am short on time, and I have spent a couple hours on it as it is with preparation of examples and a couple of recordings. I ultimately recommend you check out more polished videos online, but this one will get you started with how regex can be used in Publisher.

Thank you very much @garrettm30. Very much appreciated.

[garrettm30]

1 minute ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Thank you very much @garrettm30. Very much appreciated.

You're welcome. I hope once you have time to watch it, you find it helpful. If you have questions about what I present, or if you have specific cases that you would like help working out, please let me know.

[Petar Petrenko]

13 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

You're welcome. I hope once you have time to watch it, you find it helpful. If you have questions about what I present, or if you have specific cases that you would like help working out, please let me know.

Yes, I didn't watch it because I still have some work to do, but if not mentioned in the video, I would love to have expalined those four questions I mentioned above:

1. Removing white spaces at the beggining and at the end of the paragraph (spaces, TABs...).
2. Removing double spaces inside paragraph.
3. Removing extra spaces in front of dots, commas...
4. Replacing local character formating with character styles, like: italic, bold, bold italic, superscipt... until Affinity adds this feature in Publisher when importing text or makes paragraph styles not to reset local character formating.

[Patrick Connor]

7 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

• Removing white spaces at the beggining and at the end of the paragraph (spaces, TABs...).
• Removing double spaces inside paragraph.
• Removing extra spaces in front of dots, commas...
• Replacing local character formating with character styles, like: italic, bold, bold italic, superscipt... until Affinity adds this feature in Publisher when importing text or makes paragraph styles not to reset local character formating.

The first 3 of these have been covered in the first half hour (I have not finished watching it yet, so 4 may well be too).

[garrettm30]

@Patrick Connor I am flattered that you have made it to the half way mark.

5 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

(I have not finished watching it yet, so 4 may well be too)

I covered principles of regex, but I didn't specifically mention find and replace by formatting, but the regex and formatting can be combined at will. That is, you can use your regex string and additionally choose certain formatting conditions for the find field. And/or, you can apply certain formatting to the replacements.

@Petar Petrenko After you watch the video and get a chance to play around with it yourself, if any of this still unclear, I could make a (hopefully shorter) additional demonstration for your specific need. You can even give some sample text or a sample file where you would like a particular replacement to be made, and if I can figure it out, I will try to demonstrate how it can be done.

[Petar Petrenko]

14 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

@Petar Petrenko After you watch the video and get a chance to play around with it yourself, if any of this still unclear, I could make a (hopefully shorter) additional demonstration for your specific need. You can even give some sample text or a sample file where you would like a particular replacement to be made, and if I can figure it out, I will try to demonstrate how it can be done.

@Patrick Connor mentioned above that 3 of my questions are covered in your video. If the forth one isn't, I would like to see how it can be done, if possible.

[Old Bruce]

@Petar Petrenko, you don't need regex for number four.

 

I am assuming you have the Italic and Bold Character Styles already to go so just put them in the Replace section. No need to type anything in the Find or Replace sections.

 

[Petar Petrenko]

46 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

@Petar Petrenko, you don't need regex for number four.

 

I am assuming you have the Italic and Bold Character Styles already to go so just put them in the Replace section. No need to type anything in the Find or Replace sections.

 

I know that. I'm doing it all the time years ago in InDesign (sorry, but lack of footnotes still keep me away of using Publisher more frequently). But. it also has disadvantage, at least in InDesign. For example, when you change bold local formating with bold character style, it also formats bold titles, which is logical. But now, if you change the title paragraph style from bold to black it doesn't change it because character styles override character seting inside paragraph style. So, you have to select the title and change the character style from bold to [None] and only then the title becomes black.

That is why I insisnt on Affinity to remove reseting local character formating when applying paragraph style. And, it is not only about bold, italic... there are plenty of other local character formatings that are reseted, like: kerning, tracking, baseline shift... Please, Affinity -- don't follow you big brothers InDesign and Quark blindly. Do something much better, progresive, natural. It will be very time saving. Trust my 25+ years of experience at this field.

[Petar Petrenko]

@garrettm30 I would also like to know how to add extra space after punctuation marks but avoiding formated numbers like: 1.234,23. Why? There are cases when the customer didn't enter space after fullstop (comma, semicollon...) and now we have 2 words joined into one with punctuation mark in between.
Also, is it possible to combine multiple RegEx into one?

Thanks.

[Old Bruce]

2 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

I know that. I'm doing it all the time years ago in InDesign (sorry, but lack of footnotes still keep me away of using Publisher more frequently). But. it also has disadvantage, at least in InDesign. For example, when you change bold local formating with bold character style, it also formats bold titles, which is logical. But now, if you change the title paragraph style from bold to black it doesn't change it because character styles override character seting inside paragraph style. So, you have to select the title and change the character style from bold to [None] and only then the title becomes black.

That is why I insisnt on Affinity to remove reseting local character formating when applying paragraph style. And, it is not only about bold, italic... there are plenty of other local character formatings that are reseted, like: kerning, tracking, baseline shift... Please, Affinity -- don't follow you big brothers InDesign and Quark blindly. Do something much better, progresive, natural. It will be very time saving. Trust my 25+ years of experience at this field.

Ah, now I (better) understand what you need. I had made an assumption that you were only wanting to change imported text at a very early step.

 

[Old Bruce]

9 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

There are cases when the customer didn't enter space after fullstop )comma, semicollon...) and now we have 2 words joined into one with punctuation mark in between.

you may need to use the backslash "\" to escape some punctuation marks. 

eg: Hello.World changed to Hello. World

Find: (\w\.)(\w) will select the letter (or number) and a period without any space between it and the following letter.

Replace: \1 \2 will replace the letter and the period then insert a space and the last letter.

[Petar Petrenko]

13 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Find: (\w\.)(\w) will select the letter (or number)

I don't want to involve numbers.